Early social policies

Hi. I made this to hear your opinions of four ancient social policies. Discussion is most welcomed.

1. After playing with my friends couple MP games I noticed some of them prefer of combining both tradition and liberty trees. I find this an horrible option because when you max out both you could max out either tradition or liberty and some other tree. I tought almost any other tree later is stronger than liberty or tradition so it is waste to open and complite both.

2. I usually start game with honor because usually I can kill enough barbarians worth of 20 culture and more. Opening this early is usefull as well because later if you need further open honour it is already opened. And it leaves you more room to choose between tradition and liberty after initial scouting.

3. Piety, does anybody ever open this on first? Only if you are Byzantines you need to do that because faster you gain religion faster your UP is activated.

4. Another my opinion is that tradition is more secure option than liberty because your capital will always be a super city. Liberty is risky and weaker but on long game (and lot of cities) is will be superior over tradition. Basically tradition gives you stronger start but liberty, if succeed, is better on long run.

Here are my thought.

Almost everyone agrees tradition is the strongest early policy tree. Liberty does have its strengths, such as if you're going domination victory or if you need an early settler or specific free great person. But there are a hundred topics on this, so the short story is that tradition is the best because you will rarely need more than 4 cities for most straightforward wins and early advantages snowball into massive advantages over time.

Hybrid has its place in some strategies. The tradition opener is such a great first policy to get you could get it then go either liberty or honor. Then, if you want to later go back to tradition, for only two points you can get free amphitheaters or opera houses and then monarchy, the best hapiness policy.

That's only for single player though. I suspect MP is an entiely different animal.

In multiplayer ffa, usually trad/liberty mix is best.

Forgot to say this: liberty is good on huge maps when you have many many cities. Otherwise tradition is stronger almost in every game.

klaskeren said:

In multiplayer ffa, usually trad/liberty mix is best.

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Why? Compliting whole rationality or patronage gives you much better bonuses in every way.

calad said:

Why? Compliting whole rationality or patronage gives you much better bonuses in every way.

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No. Just the liberty settler and complete tradition. But always build a settler before your liberty settler. You need at least 5 to 6 cities to compete late game in multiplayer. Land grab is really important at first or else you have to invest in early war before you get crowded out.

There's also Tommynt's strategy for Poland where you complete both Liberty and Tradition which is what I'm doing in my multiplayer game. For some reason (this is in general) I'm always late on technology and end up with one policy between tradition and Rationalism. Usually I just grab the Commerce opener.